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R awlsian Justice and Palliative Care
Author(s) -
Knight Carl,
Albertsen Andreas
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
bioethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.494
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1467-8519
pISSN - 0269-9702
DOI - 10.1111/bioe.12156
Subject(s) - palliative care , distributive justice , economic justice , health care , nursing , feature (linguistics) , medicine , psychology , political science , law , philosophy , linguistics
Palliative care serves both as an integrated part of treatment and as a last effort to care for those we cannot cure. The extent to which palliative care should be provided and our reasons for doing so have been curiously overlooked in the debate about distributive justice in health and healthcare. We argue that one prominent approach, the R awlsian approach developed by N orman D aniels, is unable to provide such reasons and such care. This is because of a central feature in D aniels' account, namely that care should be provided to restore people's opportunities. D aniels' view is both unable to provide pain relief to those who need it as a supplement to treatment and, without justice‐based reasons to provide palliative care to those whose opportunities cannot be restored. We conclude that this makes D aniels' framework much less attractive.